Plasma treatment on 14 patients yields positive results: CDC official

The medical team at the Communicable Disease Centre (CDC) has started plasma treatment on 14 COVID-19 patients, who are in intensive care, and the results were very encouraging in most of the cases, a top health official has said.

CDC Medical Director Dr Muna al Maslamani said a total of 24 people have so donated their plasma for COVID-19 treatment.

“This treatment is important and it may help medical teams in tackling the COVID-19. All the drugs that are currently being used are not based on clinical studies, but on general observations made by medical teams around the world,” Dr Maslamani said.

She said the plasma treatment results of the medical team in Qatar are same as that of the experiment carried out in China’s Wuhan.

She said the oxygen levels of the patients who under went plasma treatment during the past week improved a lot. Similarly, the lymphocytes and chest X-rays improved, she added.

Regarding the high number of infected cases daily despite commitment of many people to home quarantine and social distancing, Dr Maslamani said this is mainly due to the fact that the virus spread has begun to enter its peak stage.

“The numbers will continue to increase until the end of April or the beginning of May. However, it’s impossible to predict this matter accurately,” she said.

After peak stage is over the number of infections will come down as happened in many countries, she noted.

She said the virus is more prevalent among a certain group of society and there extensive efforts by the Ministry of Public Health to track the transitional chains, which led to the rise in cases.

She said the Ministry of Public Health is also doing a random survey and taking samples from people who are in contact with infected cases as well as from others in order to limit the spread of the virus.